When Will the Oakland A's Stop Being a Second-Class MLB Franchise?

It is a harsh, sad reality for fans of this once-proud franchise. A franchise that used to regularly outdraw their cross-bay rivals many times over.

But alas, things change. The cross-bay rivals have not only surpassed the Oakland Athletics, but have grabbed a huge share of the baseball fans in the Bay Area.

The San Francisco Giants dominate the media, attendance, and in the process have made the A's almost irrelevant in the Bay Area baseball scene.

This has nothing to do with team success. The A's could win 100 games while the Giants lose 100 games, but talk radio and attendance will still favor the Giants.

I addressed some things the A's can do in another article. This including gaining a presence in talk radio and getting a new stadium.

The A's make it hard to be a fan of their team. They make it hard to find any coverage of the team what-so-ever, and their facilities aren't exactly the greatest in the world.

These difficulties make even people who want to support the A's change their alliances to more fan-friendly teams.

But it also goes deeper. The A's have brought this second-class label on themselves. They spend like a second-class franchise, getting robbed of free agents on a regular basis by teams like the Red Sox and Yankees.

That shows no commitment to winning at all. Lew Wolff is crying poor, and all the great work done by Billy Beane is lost in free agency and constant rebuilding.

The A's get less attention and attendance than some minor-league teams. On weekdays, they're lucky to get 15,000 fans to see a pretty good product. Old-time A's fans are rolling in their graves right now seeing what has happened to a once great franchise..